There are available, for different applications, automatic item, article or goods dispensers which store a large number of items in an ordered manner so that they may be supplied one at a time to a retrieval point on the introduction of a predetermined sum of money or a token into an automatic vending machine.
Various mechanisms have been designed for this purpose; such mechanisms for example exploit gravity or forced feed of vertically stacked objects. This allows for very compact machines but requires objects of uniform shape and constant dimensions. There also exist dispensers based on screw conveyors or having mobile compartments mounted on a wheel; these, however, are very bulky and take up considerable space, particularly in depth, relative to the number of items to be stored. This renders them quite unsuitable in situations where there are restrictions on space and, furthermore, they have the disadvantage of being of fixed size and devoid of the flexibility which would permit them to adapt to different dimensions of the stored items and thus maximize capacity.
French Pat. No. FR-A-710,935 describes a dispenser having a shaft on which a plurality of supporting elements are inserted, starting from its upper part, such supporting elements being spaced from each other by the thickness of their hub and carrying the items to be dispensed. The shaft has a screw portion which engages in an internal thread of the hubs, to support and space apart the supporting elements in the retrieval area.
This structure allows storage of the items to be dispensed in a small volume but is of complex construction, requires supporting elements having a particularly designed hub, which is difficult to manufacture, and has problems of reliability with respect to the engagement of a supporting element with the threaded part of the shaft; the maximum height of the items to be stored is moreover limited by the thickness of the hub, which is constant for all the supporting elements and cannot be adapted to items having different heights.